The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t5.1

c10.s1.t5.1

Since the publication in 1832 of the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons⁵ it has become almost a piece of sanctified idealism with foreign as well as Indian writers to wail over the disappearance of the "little republics" that are alleged to have been governing the so-called village-communities of India even as late as the period of the declining Maratha and Moghul Empires. In the light, however, of actual history based on epigraphy, as we have seen, the real self-sufficiency and genuine autonomy of rural *sva-râjes* must have been prominent by their absence during the ascendency of *sârva-bhaumas* like Chandra-gupta Maurya and Kulottûnga the Chola-Châlukya (1070—1118).